Adding aquarium salt

TO KYO

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Hello, yesterday I added 15 ml of aquarium salt to my 20g tank, but today I need to do a 15-20% water change. How much salt should I add back?
 
Do a 50% water change and add half a dose of salt.

Out of curiosity, why are you adding salt, and what fish do you have in the tank?

Salt should only be added if you are treating a disease or keeping brackish water fishes. Soft water fishes cannot tolerate salt (sodium chloride) for more than a couple of weeks, so if you have tetras, barbs, gouramis, angels, etc, don't treat them for too long.
 
Do a 50% water change and add half a dose of salt.

Out of curiosity, why are you adding salt, and what fish do you have in the tank?

Salt should only be added if you are treating a disease or keeping brackish water fishes. Soft water fishes cannot tolerate salt (sodium chloride) for more than a couple of weeks, so if you have tetras, barbs, gouramis, angels, etc, don't treat them for too long.
Why 50%?
 
Fish live in a soup of microscopic organisms and when you do small water changes you leave most of them behind where they can affect the fish. A bigger water change will dilute chemicals, harmful organisms and nutrients much more effectively than a small water change.
eg:
If you change 25% of the water, you leave 75% of the harmful stuff behind.
If you change 50% of the water, you leave 50% of the harmful stuff behind.
If you change 75% of the water, you leave 25% of the harmful stuff behind.

Bigger water changes are better.

If you change 50% of the tank water, then it is easier to work out how much salt to add (half of what you normally add for a full tank).

Better yet just add 1 heaped tablespoon of salt to a 10 litre bucket of dechlorinated water, stir it up or aerate it until the salt dissolves, then use that water to fill the tank up.
 
It is a myth that mollies need salt. They can tolerate it better than most fish but they don't need it.

What mollies do need is hard water, and salt (common salt, sodium chloride) does not make water hard. If you water is under 250 ppm/14 dH hardness you need to add Rift Lake salts, not common salt.
 
The OP is treating the fish for shimmying. That’s why the salt is being used. Colin gave some great advice on how to treat with salt in another post. OP, this is why it is wise to keep your questions related to same issue in one post. It gets confusing and could bring conflicting advise.
 
Last edited:
I missed the other thread :oops:

But Colin did say that one of the two causes of the shimmies in mollies is being in water that's too soft, so if the salt does nothing for the fish, we need to look at the hardness.
 
Agree. You need to pin down the cause for the shimmies and correct the issue. The absence of salt is most assuredly not the cause of shimmies, as mollies are freshwater fish.
 
I don’t have anything to measurewater hardness, but my ammonia went up to 0.50 due to the food getting stuck under decorations and gravel not sure if this was the actual cause of my molly wiggling abnormally
 
Is she still shimmying? Did you vac the gravel and clean under the decorations really well?
 
I did a 20% water change 20 hours ago, but the “shimmying” was still going. Then I tested my ammonia and it was around .50 so I did a 50% water change(+15ml of aquarium salt) 10 hours ago. I’m at work atm so can’t tell if she has recovered or not, but I’ll let you guys know within an hour when I get home
 
Agree. You need to pin down the cause for the shimmies and correct the issue. The absence of salt is most assuredly not the cause of shimmies, as mollies are freshwater fish.
My guppies have had shimmies before and stopped. Sometimes you don’t find a reason. I personally think sometimes they just get stressed or frightened and shimmy.
 
I have 5 mollies in the same tank and she’s the only one out the 5 having this issue
 
I don’t have anything to measurewater hardness, but my ammonia went up to 0.50 due to the food getting stuck under decorations and gravel not sure if this was the actual cause of my molly wiggling abnormally
If you contact your water supply company (via website or telephone), they should be able to tell you what the pH, GH (general hardness) and KH (carbonate hardness) are. If they can't help you, take a glass full of tap water to the local pet shop and ask them to test the pH and GH for you. Write the results down in numbers when they do the test. And ask them what the test results are in (eg: ppm or dGH or something else).

If the GH is less than 250ppm, you will need to add some mineral salts to increase the hardness. I recommend using a Rift Lake conditioner at about 1/2 strength.

Rift Lake conditioners primarily contain calcium and magnesium chloride, which increase the GH nicely. It also contains other minerals in smaller amounts and they are also useful. It will also increase the pH.

To use it you add some Rift Lake conditioner to a bucket of water, aerate it for at least 30 minutes and then use that water to do a water change.

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Ammonia, nitrite and high nitrate levels can cause fish to shimmy, but the most common cause is low GH or protozoan infections.

If you do a big (75%) water and gravel clean the substrate, it will dilute the ammonia and protozoans in the water and will usually help. But you need to make sure the GH is suitable and no more ammonia builds up in the water.

If the tank has been running for more than 6 weeks, and you haven't cleaned the filter in the last 2 weeks, then clean the filter too.
 

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